Dairy Free Eggplant "Parm" with Ground Beef

I have always loved Italian food. Cheese, carbs, tomato sauce, herbs, oh my! Once I realized I couldn't tolerate gluten or dairy, my Italian cooking become limited. I missed warm creamy, tomato dishes like baked ziti or lasagna. Then, I started a hybrid of the Paleo/GAPS diet. I dreamed of a dairy free, grain free version of Eggplant Parmesan for months before giving  Coconut flour is great for breading, and I figured a nut cheese would work well when baked with some tomatoe sauce. I sure was right about that! It really helps to make your own tomato sauce.

This dish is food for the soul. Especially for those of us who are so restricted. It takes a lot of effort. You can make the tomato sauce in advance. You can actually make all of the items in advance, and then the night of just layer everything and throw it in the oven. This way it only takes a little more than an hour the night of.


Nut "Cheese:"
1-2 cups of of nuts. (I use a mixture of cashews, macadamia nuts, and sunflower seeds or just cashews.)
1-2 TBSP Nutritional yeast
Garlic Powder, to taste
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste

Instructions: 
Soak nuts in water for 1-24 hours. Strain. Blend in food processor, adding water slowly to make a ricotta like paste. Add nutritional yeast, garlic powder, salt, and pepper to taste.

Tomato Sauce:
1 small onion, diced
8 tomatos
dried herbs, like thyme and rosemary
garlic
fresh basil
salt and pepper
a few beef bones, preferably with some meat on them
1 small can tomato paste

Instructions: 
Saute onion,garlic, and herbs for a few minutes until slightly browned. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, beef bones, salt and pepper. Simmer for at least an hour (Move on to the next part of the recipe during this time). Add basil and any other  seasonings to taste and simmer for a few minutes more so the basil will infuse.

Eggplant:
1/2 cup coconut flour
dried herbs or seasoning blend of choice, 1 TBSP
salt and pepper
1 egg

Instructions: 
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice eggplant in either direction, making it thin enough so it will cook through easily. Whisk egg. Dip eggplant slices into egg to coat, then dip in herbed coconut flour. Line the biggest pan that fits in your oven with tin foil and bake each side for 25 minutes, or more, until eggplant is browned on the outside and soft through. If your oven is small like mine, you may need to do two batches, for a total of 50 minutes each, or an hour and 40 minutes, plus extra time for removing one batch and adding the other. It's okay if your tomato sauce is simmering this whole time.

Beef:
1 pound ground beef
1 half small onion, diced
herbs and seasoning of choice

Instructions:
While your last side of eggplant side is in the oven, saute onions and spices and add beef until browned.


Eggplant "Parm"
Layer the sauce, eggplant, beef, nut "cheese." Lightly sprinkle with remaining herbed coconut flour. Bake on 350 or 375 for 30-45 minutes. Broil for 15 minutes to brown the top.

Baking on the GAPS Diet (+ Carrot Cupcake Recipe)

Once I introduced nuts back into my diet, the baking was on! I just have to make sure I don't eat too many cupcakes or slices of "bread" at once, or I do get a little stomach ache.

Almond and coconut flour are the two I most commonly use in recipes. Coconut flour has a tendency to be a bit dry, and almond flour is said to not be so healthy when baked or heated. I personally like to use some of both. I generally don't measure, but I'd say I usually use half and half or 2:1.  Sometimes, I use some ground hazel nut meal as well. It has a great flavor!

My original grain-free/GAPS baking experiments were often oily and wet in the middle, but still pretty tasty. To avoid the oily, I used less oil and more eggs. To avoid the mushy in the middle, I cook lower and longer. A lot of recipes I was finding on the web had baking powder and/or baking soda in them. I avoided those since I was pretty sure they weren't GAPS friendly. Here's why:

Baking powder=baking soda + cornstarch: This obviously has starch, which is to be avoided on the GAPS diet.

Baking soda: Though GAPS legal, since it is very alkaline, it is not recommended for people with low stomach acid (I think that's me).

I learned all this from a great article on The Well Fed Homestead's site. It seems that both baking powder and soda are best avoided for me. However, in such small amounts, it seems that they can't be that bad? The more you "cheat," the harder/longer it is to heal. Honestly, the recipes are much better with at least baking soda. If I don't have yummy baked goods, I might cheat even harder on something else. I'll have to play it by ear. Who wouldn't want to eat these yummy looking cupcakes?

Here's a recipe I adapted from a couple of people for the carrot cupcakes above:

Cake ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes):

 1.5 cups nut flour (I used a blend of coconut and almond)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
4 eggs
4 tablespoons coconut oil
1/3 cup honey
1.5 cups grated carrots
1/4-1/2 cup raisins (old dry ones are best)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Frosting ingredients:
1/2 cup ghee (or butter. coconut oil would probably work too)
1/4 cup honey

Instructions:
Preheat the oven at 350.
Mix the dry ingredients, in a mixer or with a hand held blender to get coconut flour clumps blended.
Add the carrots.
Melt coconut oil, add honey and mix.
Whisk eggs.
Add liquid ingredients to dry, using mixer or blender if necessary.
Place in cupcake holders (works best without paper holders - use silicon or directly in pan)
Bake about 20 minutes.  

Whip ghee/butter with honey.  Use frosting tools or smooth onto completely cooled cupcakes. 

These cupcakes were amazing! You could barely tell they were grain free, let alone gluten free. I'll have to try them without the baking powder and soda and see what happens. The frosting wasn't enough to cover the entire 12 cupcakes, but, it was so intense, it only needed as much as is shown.

 Lately I'm loving listening to Zola Jesus as I get busy around the house, or am just relaxing. Her music is a lovely blend of eerie and soulful tunes. I like all her albums! 

Surviving Stage 1 of the GAPS Diet

I did it! 

Five days of only broth, soup, boiled meat and squashes and veggies (only non or low starchy ones) and Sauer Kraut juice. Those are the stage 1 allowed food. For a full list of the foods allowed at the 6 different stages of the GAPS introduction diet, see a nice page put together by Health, Home and Happiness.

Alright,  I might have eaten a few other things not on that list. This diet is so challenging,  and hard to stick to and yet there are very few sources of support for how to deal with this. However,  my only cheats were foods that are allowed on the full GAPS diet (stage 7): fruit, honey and the kombucha drink. Those things don't sound too bad right?  

The reason the Full GAPS diet allows fruit and honey because they mostly have monsugars. Refined sugar, or table sugar, is a di-sugar, which actually takes work for the body to digest. Monosugars are absorbed easily by the body. To learn more about this, read my blog on sugars.

My kombucha cheat may have been a bad idea, since kombucha is fed refined sugar there may still be sugar in the kombucha drink unless the drink was cultured for long enough that the culture consumed all the sugar. With store-bought kombucha, you can't be sure. If you brew it at home, make sure to brew it for longer, say about 30 days. 

Besides avoiding the disaccharides, and grains do break down to disaccharides, it is very important to avoid starch on the GAPS diet. One of the most common mistakes in the GAPS diet is to remove all grains but not remove starches. For other common mistakes see the post by The Healthy Home Economist.  My previous comfort food when I tried the Paleo diet was sweet potatoes, but alas, no more. I love kabocha squash (Japanese pumpkin) with coconut oil and himalayan sea salt. It is my new favorite thing to eat! I've been a little bit too worried that it's higher in starch than other squashes, but from a brief web search, it seems like it is in the same category as other winter squashes which are allowed on GAPS. 

A nutrotionist told me to deal with GAPS cravings by mixing honey with butter or coconut oil. She also recommended ginger tea with honey,  between meals as all sweet things should be taken.  The website Home Health and Happiness recommends some juice and a nap to deal with carb withdrawals. However commercial juice is not recommended for many reasons.

One thing I feel there is not a lot of support on, is how to deal with the emotional experience of the GAPS diet. Since the GAPS diet is to heal the gut, and the gut-brain connection, its no surprise that it might also be a moody experience. As all these toxins are released and bacteria die off, it's triggering my depression and anxiety. The rest of this blog is focused on ways to ease the emotional stress: 

Another recommendation to help with the detox is to take baths, with Epsom salts or other detoxifiers. Living in my tiny San Francisco apartment, I don't have a bath tub. So I've been doing a foot bath every night. I made a nice mix:

1 cup Epsom salt

1 Tablespoon Almond oil

80 drops mixed essential
(I used Rose, Rose Geranium, Jasmine, and Ylang Ylang) 

The foot bath is very relaxing, and I do it before bed. It actually helps me sleep better than a full bath. I think a full bath might be too intense for me, as well as dehydrating. With a foot bath, I get some detox support and a lot of relaxation. For city girl who walks around a lot, not always in comfortable shoes, I think these foot baths are going to become a regular part of my life! 

I'm doing this diet because I have years of gut issues, depression and anxiety. One thing that I've learned over the years is how to use music to support my emotional needs. While I love dancing, poppy music, I don't have the energy for it right now while in the beginning of the introduction diet. But I need uplifting music. So, mellow yet upbeat music is what I am looking for and I found this in Yo La Tengo's new album "Fade" (2013). Sometimes bands that have been around for awhile disappoint. Not this album. It's got all the best features of Yo La Tengo's lengendary past, and yet it's also refreshingly unique. I can't get enough of it! Highly recommended for the GAPS intro diet, or for a happy, mellow Sunday afternoon.